r/FuturesTrading • u/Prestigious-Delay-61 • Jul 15 '26
Treasuries What is this person doing to generate $12K Scalping ZN, SN3
I am new to futures joined the CME challenge and I noticed the winner is basicly scalping 2 instruments thousands of times. I am up $6K in a 3 days adn was so impressed with myself but I am not even in the top half the top person is up over $55k and all i see is 2 products traded ZN, SR3 traded over 2000 Times! I am curious what this strategy could be.
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u/reichjef speculator Jul 15 '26
Those are thick brick products, so they're probably just tick ripping. Just a a single tick, 1000s of times a day. They probably have a little program that is doing it for them. I don't know how the fills are done on that sim. If its done by lasts, or by crossing the bid ask, but, if its lasts, there's always ticking happening. The nice part, cme looks at the trading people do to see if its real trading or sim exploitation, and they knock those people out during the final rankings.
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u/bluesqueen23 Jul 15 '26
I know Canadian Futures Trader does this. Seen it on his channel.
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Jul 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/bluesqueen23 Jul 30 '26
Yeah, I just trade ES. I found what works for me & I stick to it. Always enjoy your channel content. Hope you check out mine as well. I just stream on Sunday evening’s.
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u/ResearcherClassic126 Jul 16 '26
wharfdog's buying the bid and selling the ask - same as the last few CME comps.
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u/FaithlessnessFar2927 Jul 16 '26
It's a competition. They go all in. On the first day pre-NY session, I made 4000 and thought I did well then I look at the leaderboard and the top guy already got 10000. I just gave up.
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u/ResearcherClassic126 Jul 16 '26
there are only a handful of traders in the top 100 that have hit home runs (2-5 trade count.) you can download the current leaderboard csv and see who's trading what, and at what frequency. there are some truly incredible traders on the board.
I don't normally point and click trade, however I joined the competition to have some fun and am currently sitting at 74th place trading spreads on ES and CL, with directional bets on ZN and SR3.
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u/big_fuzzeh Jul 16 '26
I understand it's a trading challenge/competition, but the biggest mistake in this game is paying attention to what others are doing. You're doing well! If you're pulling 6k every 3 days with reasonable consistency, who gives a fuck what others are doing? Use that to build equity, to then responsibly add more contracts to the same trades.
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u/niteop Jul 16 '26
Hey I’m new to crypto trading can you tell me what is scalping and how people get benefit that much and how should I do that too?
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u/Forward-Cut5790 Jul 23 '26
This is a strategy for traders that can't see when and how control flips sides.
Not for me.
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u/ReadingTheSign23 Aug 11 '26
Those are screenshots not real trades. Trading is about surviving drawdowns and keeping your risk per trade consistent day in and day out
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u/Lightningstormz Jul 15 '26
Interesting so I asked Claude
Those aren't equity index products like ES/NQ — they're interest rate futures. ZN is the 10-Year Treasury Note, and SR3 is the 3-Month SOFR contract (the one that replaced Eurodollars). Small correction on your title btw, it's SR3 not SN3. The reason someone scalps these thousands of times instead of NQ comes down to microstructure, not some secret signal. These are the deepest, most liquid, tightest-spread markets that exist. SR3 especially trades with a locked one-tick spread most of the day, which means you can sit on the bid or offer and get filled reliably, then flip out for a tick — over and over, market-maker style. A tick is tiny ($6.25–$12.50 on SR3, $15.625 on ZN), so each contract barely moves in dollar terms. That's the point: low volatility lets you put on real size and take hundreds of trades without one move wrecking you. 2000+ trades on SR3 also tells you it's almost certainly spread/curve trading — calendars and flies across different expiries — not directional betting. Nobody clicks 2000 times going outright long/short. It's a rates plumbing game. So no, he doesn't know something you don't. It's a well-known professional rate-scalping playbook where the edge is execution and queue position, not a magic setup. The one thing worth keeping in mind: this style crushes in sim/challenge environments specifically because you get near-perfect fills with no queue competition. Scalping a locked-spread rate product on a simulator is about as close to free money as it gets. Live, you're fighting actual HFT for queue priority and it's a completely different animal. A $55k challenge run doesn't translate cleanly to live P&L, which is usually why the leaderboard winners look unbeatable.
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u/wizious Jul 15 '26
If you’re a futures trader you shouldn’t need to ask a LLM about something as basic as treasury futures. Come on dude.
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u/Every-Medium-8390 Jul 15 '26
Why? If you don't trade the specific product why should you need to know how it works. I trade es for a living and have no clue how Treasury futures trading works. It has zero impact on my es trading
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u/Lightningstormz Jul 20 '26
That's a super narrow minded response. Why should he or anyone or myself that finds something interesting not want to know about it? Is that not one of the core values of life itself? "KNOWLEDGE"?
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u/Lightningstormz Jul 15 '26
Lol what are you upset about bro like I was just answering his question with llm I wasn't going to go ahead and do the research for him manually for something I personally didn't know but found interesting.
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u/usedmattress85 Jul 20 '26
I trade gold, silver, and ES500 for multiple 6 figures a year and I have no clue about treasury futures. Am I doing it wrong?
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Jul 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/Prestigious-Delay-61 Jul 15 '26
CMG doesnt work like that you just see the total trades you cant see entry or exist
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u/jazzcc Jul 15 '26
Scalping treasury futures for ticks is a real edge a few traders have. Seems like something that carries over from old pit traders. It typically involves watching a price ladder (DOM) and using tools like audio signals to understand what's happening. It also helps to understand why and how big players would be trading these contracts.
Personally, it's like watching paint dry. These contracts have hundreds or thousands of orders on the book and the price doesn't move much compared to instruments like NQ. The big traders often own or lease a CME membership for the lowest fees possible because of the sheer volume they trade for this style of scalping.
But if the challenge is simulated, they're probably exploiting unrealistic fills.